Sometimes you say Damn You Willis because something might either be ominous or innocuous.
This… this actually strikes dread through me. This strip tells me that Amber might not be sharing memories with Amazi-Girl anymore. It would make sense, especially with recent psychological stress starting to weigh down on her even more… looking back, the shots of her bruised knuckles in older strips suddenly seem much more dreadful.
This could be really fucking bad if a portion of Amber’s mind is actually out of her control, making decisions backed by separate, distinct motives that Amber herself can’t keep tabs on. What could happen to whomever Amazi-Girl defines as an enemy? What happens if Amazi-Girl begins feeling threatened by the prospect of not existing? Could Danny or Ethan be in danger in the future? Perhaps Sal? Amber herself?? SOMEONE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD GET THIS GIRL TO A DOCTOR.
Or maybe this is just a strip in which David Willis introduces a puppy as a new character, obviously destined to rival Dina in the popularity poll, who knows.
Or, for anyone looking for a tl;dr-
OH NO AMBER AND AMAZI-GIRL MIGHT BE SPLIT PERSONALITIES, THIS COULD BE MAJORLY BAD, or, alternatively, adorable dog for best character.
Same. It took me a minute of wondering what the punchline of Amber’s reaction was. Then I realized that the punchline was my gut getting hit because Amber can’t even remember punching someone.
I agree that Amber’s increasing dissociation is bad news, but Jesus Christ, did you have to make it into a “this person with mental illness might be a danger to OTHERS” spiel? Because that’s bullshit. I’m worried about Amber.
First disassociated individuals will want to attack humans who violate the sanctity of self-possession of another being as well as violating the rights entailed by the social concept of human ownership over this being and the legal statutes supporting said concept, in the process tearing apart familial bonds and abusing helpless creatures and causing widespread emotional harm :breath: and then next they’ll want to attack dogs!
..there’s a shared concept there! So as we all know, there’s only a slippery slope between the two things! THAT’S HOW IT WORKS.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to see if a banana and some gymnastics can magic me up a banana split.
I’m not worried about Amazigirl running amuck. I’m suddenly worried about Amber falling apart. Amber is a smart girl and will develop a sudden interest in researching disassociation and then get help. Looks at title of the comic and shakes fist at the sky again.
I’m not sure where that came from. I don’t see anything about “this person with mental illness might be a danger to OTHERS” in the comic. Other than AG’s ongoing vigilantism, which is already an established trait. Dognappers are a better target for face-punching than some of her previous choices.
Amber’s reaction, as I read it, is from having no memory of punching a dognapper or going out as AG at all, not from suddenly thinking AG is a danger to others.
Except, she might be? I mean yeah I know that’s part of the stigma but in this case it’s an alter that literally goes out and kicks ass without amber’s judgement. Then again I haven’t trusted amber’s judgement in years so who knows amazi-girl might be the better personality
I’m sorry. I don’t mean to paint anyone as a dangerous monster. I just feel that Amazi-Girl has acted less than noble or fair in the past (she tried to incite Sal to violence on several occasions, for instance). I’m worried that Amazi-Girl might be willing to rationalize doing something like that again, which would be very very bad.
CandidCanid is also expressly worried about Amber, just also everyone else too…
I recently finished the archives (this is my second post, heh) and my impression is that Amazi-Girl is dangerously fixated on law. Lawbreakers are valid targets for Amber’s violent impulses. That’s the entire, noble, purpose of the persona… She feels a need to hurt people, but channels that towards justice. I’m not being sarcastic or dismissive, I can relate to this coping mechanism more than I’d like.
But people already worry about breaking the rules near Amber, much less Amazi-Girl. Even “victimless” crimes like getting a little drunk with friends. Amber maturely expresses disapproval. I’m going to be frank, I think Amazi-Girl might go a lot farther, particularly if “Amber” is in a full-on fugue instead of playing a character.
Amber having a dissosiative identity was my first thought. Though there’s no reason to think Amazi-Girl (assuming she actually is a different identity) would be a threat to anyone other than dog-stealing assholes.
I’d like to think Willis is above the whole “mentally ill person is violent and scary” trope.
What if it’s actually Dorothy impersonating her? The whole “X hero is more than a person, it’s a symbol that must be kept alive even after the original loses their will or capacity to don the cape”.
The Dorothy senerio would be a huge relief. I suppose that because of her already sore knuckles from beating Ryan with her sharp phone she could be realizing it couldn’t be her that did it, but I don’t think that’s the way to bet. Hithertofor Amber has wanted a disociation between Amber and Amazigirl that wasn’t really there and now she she has evidence there is one. It certainly isn’t a boring story.
It might be scary for her now, if she starts losing her own personality.
Like Batman, the playboy, billionaire, philanthropist are basically an act for Bruce to blend in. His true personality is Batman. And that is contrast to someone like Iron Man/Tony Stark, who still keeps his original personality, albeit matured after several intense situation.
how did we get to the point where doing violence to Nazis is controversial? Pepperidge Farm and i both remember when the person who did the most violence to Nazis got a medal
By now, of course, everyone who isn’t an actual communist has been called a nazi by someone. According to Valdimir Putin everyone west of Odessa is a nazi. That simplifies the decisions quite a lot.
Oh, also, there’s a big difference between “Obama is a Nazi because he likes socialized health care” and “Dick Spencer is a Nazi because he supports a white ethnostate and thinks nonwhites are genetically inferior”.
Agreed! So here’s a clarification: Punch ACTUAL Nazis. It’s not really that hard. “Nazi” is not a relative term. It’s, like, a set of specific opinions about how to treat other human beings. Anyone who calls themselves a member of the alt-right most likely falls into the camp.
As long as we’re being careful to define “nazi” as “literally an actual nazi, like, espousing views that promote violence against Jews, POC, and other marginalized groups”, think we should be fine.
1. It’s one thing when actual violence is being done to others and condoned by war.
2. People have gotten into the habit of dubbing people Nazi’s over any disagreement. If we follow that through with “punching Nazi’s is okay” we can see the the downward spiral.
3. Just because someone has a genuinely shit opinion doesn’t mean violence is justified. The best response to disgusting speech is more speech. Shout them down, chew them out, call them whatever you want, but attacking them just make them feel like they’re in the right.
Don’t get me wrong, I truly believe these people are the scum of the earth, but they should be dragged into the light and be shown for what they are. People should try not to sacrifice their ideals and higher ground over such worthless garbage.
No. The best response to actual nazism is rendering them unable to speak. Whether that’s refusing to give them a platform, shouting nonsense over them when they open their mouth, or straight up decking them out cold, removing them from the discussion is most important. Because if they are allowed to speak, that legitimizes their position and gives it a place in the discussion it truly does not deserve.
My personal favourite is cranking up music by Jewish artists whenever a Nazi tries to speak. The person in question did so with a boombox but I imagine a phone would be acceptable too.
I assure you, the nazis will convince themselves they’re in the right no matter how people respond to them.
Shouting them down, drowning them out, and running them out of town are all preferable when those options are viable, but the numbers required aren’t always there, and it’s dangerous to leave a nazi unpunched when numbers aren’t clearly against them.
Nazi “beliefs” are, in fact, violent agendas aiming to exterminate the majority of the planet’s population, and should be treated as such. Any gratification garnered in doing so is entirely irrelevant.
knowledge of history is a good start to understanding as to why the “punch a Nazi” thing is opposed. During the Weimar Republic in post WWI Germany, there was an organization known as Antifaschistische Aktion, a communist backed group in Germany set up several laws and resorted to violence and intimidation for the sake of crushing Hitler’s political movement. However the violence had the opposite effect, people grew sympathetic twords Hitler’s brown shirts and he used this sympathy to generate more influence, which eventually led to him becoming the country’s leader. He then used the very same laws that Antifaschistische Aktion helped make to solidify his uncontestable rule and violently oppress the masses.
Many people see the current “punch a Nazi” and see parallels to Antifaschistische Aktion, and want the practice to be stopped knowing full well that history could very well repeat itself and this wave of violence could breathe life back into a long dead corpse.
Furthermore the term “Nazi” has become very nebulous as of late and the accusation gets thrown around very aggressively with little comparison to actual Nazi behavior, this would lead to several people who hold no respect or interest in following Nazi ideology getting harmed because someone decided to brand them as one.
no no let’s have some respectful debates with the guys screaming about ethnic cleansing, everyone knows the best way to defeat the far-right is to give it as much neutral media attention as possible and count on that signal boosting to do the trick
Not to play devil’s advocate, but the attention given was decidedly not neutral. Instead, they were shamed, they were called out, and anyone who even tried to say “hey, let’s stay neutral,” or, god-forbid, said “they have a right to say these things, whether we agree or not,” was shouted down and summarily lumped with them, in the basket of deplorables, which pushed MORE neutral people to side with them. If we were to, instead, have peaceful, RESPECTFUL debates, maybe people would see that they don’t have any good points.
Or, are you afraid that maybe we’re the ones who don’t have any good points, and people would flock to those that we call nazis?
If you think coverage of Trump was neutral, you have a weird definition of it. They were dismissive and lolsy, yes, but actual constant fact-checking was unseen outside of maybe NPR. It’s not “neutral” to just repeat somebody’s bullshit without calling out that it’s bullshit. Additionally, have you SEEN the media coverage of Nazis lately? Look at the shit the New York Times is putting out. Dapper young fascists indeed.
Also, we had, like, a dozen “peaceful, respectful debates” with the bastard. He won the presidency.
There has been plenty of neutral mainstream media attention. There has also been a lot of genuine discussion as to whether debating fascism politely is a good idea, useless, or outright dangerous. Personally, I believe people like Anita Sarkeesian who have dealt majorly with the people in the new alt-right, people in the punk scenes who have experience with older neo-nazis, people like Umberto Eco who lived through WWII Europe, and the neo-nazis themselves when they talk about it: fascism as a belief system is predicated in part on the idea that action is a moral necessity and that non-violence is a weakness to be exploited.
That is what we are afraid of. We are afraid that the Nazis are, yes, using the threat of the “violent left” as a way of recruiting those on the fence, alongside using the reluctance of moderates to act as a way to gain political ground, alongside using every other tactic available to them to gain power, just like they always do. We are afraid that they will gain power and do horrible things, and that people will pay more attention to whether or not we’re being polite about disagreeing with them than anything they’re actually doing.
People keep talking about “but people were mean on the internet and shouted at people who are neutral about Nazis so of course people are more sympathetic to the Nazis” as if that’s some kind of rational position. It isn’t. White supremacy is factually incorrect and morally wrong. It is not respectful to the many, many people it harms to treat it as if it’s on the same moral level as not supporting white supremacy.
The problem I have with this guide is that this is often somehow considered “peacefully minding their own business without presenting any legitimate threat to anyone or their property.”
The issue with that is, most of the nazis currently walking around insist they are not nazis and only want to have a peaceful, rational discussion by tiki torchlight on why Jews and POC should be killed.
Funny enough, those who tell us to “remember our history” rarely wish to remember Cable Street.
Nor how the whole reason Nazis took power wasn’t being too hostile, it was pardoning their leader and giving him a government post. Centrists, not radicals, were responsible for Hitler’s rise.
A noteworthy difference is that no one back then had real context for what the nazis wanted and were going to do. Currently that context has been forcibly carved into society’s memory. I think they’re less likely to get pity this time around.
“Nazi” has gotten kind of nebulous. So let’s make it clear – it should mean people who believe in white supremacy, that slavery was a good way to approach blacks, that Hitler was right about Jews, and the like. They deserve to be punched.
Sure, they try to use being punched to build sympathy. They also try to use not being punched to build power and intimidate their opponents and would-be victims. They are hoping for a fight and are sure to get it, either because you fight them by choice now or out of desperation later.
Knowledge of history is a good thing. Maybe this time around we could use our knowledge of history to not side with the people who want to take over the world and commit genocide over the people who think that’s a big problem? In fact, maybe if people find themselves more threatened by the people angry about genocide because of the hypothetical chance they might extend that to other conservative groups, than the people threatening genocide, we could suggest that that is in itself a little worrying?
Nazi’s deserved to be punched, imo. But that’s not the same thing as saying that punching Nazi’s is *wise*. Many people focused on giving people what they deserve / dishing out justice fail to factor long-term consequences into the equation (or factor in the number of people who don’t agree with you, etc).
The wisest path is whichever one gets as many people as possible safely out of the woods of these dark times. Punching Nazi’s impedes that goal. Ignoring Nazi’s *definitely* impedes that goal. So don’t do either.
Interesting you bring that up, since Hitler himself disagreed with you. According to him, the ONLY thing that could have stopped him was if his enemies understood his goals from the beginning and crushed the nucleus of the movement from the get go.
Why would you ever think that everyone who understands that incitement to violence is *not* free speech agrees with you on “punching Nazis”? At best that would be vigilantism, at worst it’s actual fascism. The fact you’re acting like a fascist to a horrible person doesn’t vindicate you.
Oh, sorry, you don’t seem to know what fascism is. That’s leading to some confusion here, so to clarify:
Hatespeech and incitement to violence =/= “dissenting opinions”.
Incitement to violence is both violent and illegal. If a man screams for the death of the Jews, punching him is, in fact, an act of community defense (or self-defense, if you are Jewish).
Fascism, being an inherently violent ideology, cannot contain “peaceful protesters”. A man who marches down the street calling for ethnic cleansing is a violent fascist, and should be removed from the streets for the safety of a just society.
“Tolerating intolerance” is the domain of cowards and privileged white liberals.
“Incitement to violence is both violent and illegal.”
makes sense.
“If a man screams for the death of the Jews, punching him is, in fact, an act of community defense”
wait, hold on, that doesn’t follow. if someone’s doing something illegal, punching them isn’t automatically okay. if they’re an immediate threat it might be fine, but otherwise, ideally the legal system would deal with them.
when the legal system is routinely ignoring those fuckers, then it gets muddier, though.
And that’s where we do run into trouble. Because while I agree that it would be *much* better if the law would handle this, due to a combination of badly-run police departments (who sometimes even sympathize with the fascists!) and some questionable court rulings (calling for the deaths of all Muslims is actually not regarded by the US justice system as “incitement”), the legal system *is* ignoring those fuckers. They are merrily marching down our streets, just as they did back before the war. So what are we allowed to do about it?
I don’t have a great answer to that. But I don’t throw stones at those who do (ooh, double-meaning).
“‘community defense’ whatever that is supposed to mean”
Spoken like a guy who’s never had to worry about having his temple burned down because some white dude thought it was a mosque.
Awkward use of fallacies, there. “Ad hominem” only applies if background is irrelevant, and here I was making a point: You don’t seem to understand how fascists work if you assume that they are not threats to a community, and I’m guessing that they don’t come after you very often if you think fighting back is itself “fascism”. You don’t understand how fighting back against fascists is community defense? Yeah, I’ll happily say that you’re privileged on at least a few axes, and feel pretty safe in that assumption.
Anyways, I’ve said my piece and made my peace. tl;dr, fascism is inherently violent and those who preach peace to it are bringing daisies to a gunfight. While a pacifist myself, I do not resent the minorities who feel they must act aggressively to protect themselves from the violent activists swarming the streets.
We need to get the nazis off the streets. If the police won’t do it in accordance with sensible anti-incitement laws (which Europe has quite successfully instated without any of the “slippery slope fascism” nonsense you centrists fret over), what are we supposed to do? The justice system won’t protect us. I’m tired of ivory tower centrists lecturing those in the trenches about how, if they’d only be polite and civil, the fascists would surely realize what fools they are and fade back into obscurity.
Nazis have been on the rise in large part because we got complacent. I will hear out tactical arguments about the strategic failures of violence as a political strategy, but the “If you punch a fascist, it makes you a fascist” argument is so morally simplistic, most pre-schoolers would laugh at it. You are making a fool of yourself.
I’ve been sexually harassed in public, which is a pretty blatant threat to my bodily safety. Disabled women (like myself) are 8 times more likely to be the victim of a violent attack than able-bodied women, who themselves are 3 times more likely to be victims than men.
Yet for all the #meToo hashtags, and all the awareness being raised about sexual harassment, nobody is going around saying it’s okay to punch the Harvey Winestiens and Louis CK’s of the world. It’s almost like, in pretty much every context, people accept that a threat of violence cannot be lawfully and in good conscience met with violence. If someone yells at you and tells you to stand there and masturbates into a plant, it’s unlawful to kick him in the dick. Terry Crews talks about this pretty explicitly when he went on Good Morning America to talk about being groped and sexually harassed at a party.
The laws are clear, and they remain clear even though perpetrators of sexual assault and harassment are rarely convicted.
So, I guess what bothers me about the whole “punch a Nazi” thing is that Nazi’s aren’t special. Nazi’s aren’t the only ones who get off on power and have violent, extreme ideologies. But people advocate for “punch a Nazi” rather than “punch a rapist” or “punch a misogynist” because nobody wants to admit that the people they admire or like really, genuinely deserve to be punched. Or, on some level, they think women don’t really count as people, not the way they do.
Men get these power-vigilante fantasies on punching villains, but women don’t. Because we have to focus on how to actually stay safe in the real world. That means not escalating violence. That means prioritizing escape over combat. That means taking security measures, getting big dogs, staying in groups, and listening to the “whisper network.” That means, sometimes, making police reports and filing protection orders.
Captain America fantasies go out the window when you’re actually in danger on a day to day basis. When people are saying, “We need to prioritize de-escalating violence over vigilante justice,” it isn’t because we aren’t sympathetic to those who hate Nazi’s. We also hate Nazi’s. It’s just that we know we’re the most vulnerable, and if things become more violent, the fallout is going to hit us the worse. So please. Don’t put us in that position.
Until we live in a society when one out of six racial minority men have been victims of racial violence, you cannot equate being a male racial minority to being a woman, especially a racial minority woman. If you truly understood what it felt like to live in a violent culture posed against you, you would not be advocating matching violence for violence so blithely.
ETA: After some research, I have discovered that the statistics show that close to 1 in 6 black men have been victims of racial violence in America. I apologize for my ignorance, and for trying to use an “oppression olympics” tactic. That’s a lazy rhetorical point, and it also definitely is hurtful by diminishing the hardships faced by black people in America.
Uh, so turns out violent bigotry sucks across the board. Sorry about that.
There is some logic to be had that responding with violence is not actually a realistic option for many people. And it’s true that Nazis aren’t special, but from my perspective as someone who’s been abused and harassed and who has spoken to a lot of other people in the same position, there are a lot of people who will happily, openly advocate violence against people who commit those types of violence. There is in fact a pretty loud, if not at all powerful, group of people who will openly say that there is no situation in which murdering your abuser or rapist is morally wrong, only situations in which it’s not worth the consequences. Because there is some shit that crosses the line, and if society continues to be incapable of punishing it or even showing that it gives a damn, protecting yourself is based on what works.
And the other thing is- to be perfectly clear on the relationship here- a lot of the people advocating violence against Nazis are in groups the Nazis advocate violence against, including some women. De-escalating is great when it works. Getting Nazis out of power by peaceful means is great when it works. And I think we can totally discuss what means we as a society are capable of using and what means are actually effective- that’s a way more productive debate than whether fascism is acceptable or not. But it’s not just a power fantasy. It’s a sincere belief, often based on evidence (whether or not you agree that evidence is conclusive), that other methods are not working.
Okay, bottom line it’s an offshoot from a more general principle: Thoughts and words should not be answered with violence (unless the words are a specific, immediate, credible threat). Same with political leanings.
In the case of these particular words and these particular politics, that seems a bit overnoble, but that’s one of those slippery slopes that it’s damned hard to come back from. Replace “Nazi” with almost any other ideology, like, say, “Green”, and ask “Why is it wrong to punch a Green in the face?” There’s a bit of a false equivalence there in that Greens aren’t defined by actively seeking to disenfranchise, discredit, harm, or kill people based on ethnicity, but that’s still where the conceptual lines are drawn.
… and for the record, I’m not entirely endorsing this particular line of reasoning, just explaining it. I can waver back and forth on that point from day to day. Mostly I’m in the “don’t punch nazis because it’s bad tactics that play into their hands” camp.
I appreciate your good-faith breakdown of the matter, and your not-bullshit reason for falling on the side you do. Personally, as a pacifist, I abhor violence, but I hesitate to lecture minorities on what they choose to to when they are threatened. Guiding people against self-defense actually goes against my pacifist beliefs.
I believe that we would be better off without Nazis marching the streets, and from what I’ve seen, leftist groups like BLM get called “violent” no matter what they do, so I tend to disagree with the idea that Antifa somehow hurts our position. They call us violent if a lone sniper shoots three cops. They call us violent if a lone Black Bloc member punches a Nazi. They don’t really care about magnitude, especially not with the way the media hyperfocuses on minute but politically interesting crimes.
The oppressed are not permitted to protest, no matter how mildly. They must be kept in their place, or chaos will follow (the elites will lose their privilege).
The controversy arose when people started calling people nazis when they weren’t actually nazis. That’s not to say that actual nazis haven’t been involved in recent things, but a lot of the people I’ve seen called nazis, by people I know in person and people online (to justify them being hit, if or when it came to it), have often not been remotely close to actual nazis, and sometimes even somewhat left of center.
And if they aren’t really nazis, we don’t support punching them. Do they support nazi ideology like “banning refugees”, “mass deportation”, “banning abortion”, “treating Islam like a dangerous religion”, etc? If not, we should be fine!
Consider how sleep-deprived and stressed a normal college is.
Now add in the demands of Amber’s vigilante escapades, especially given that we’ve seen that they often occur at night (ergo, potentially diminishing her sleep further).
Now add in the emotional and psychological stress she’s burdened with, which just got amplified by recent events.
Now imagine a dog keeping you up in the middle of the night with its yapping.
Now imagine you’re Amber.
Aaand now, imagine you’re Amazi-Girl, waking up to a public noise violation.
Oh shit, this is bad. That’s full-on split personality.
Also, Willis, thank you for including the shot of her split knuckles. My first thought was an impersonator, and that debate would have rendered these comments a trainwreck.
Yeah, that was my first thought. I was all ready with a comment about was it the cyborg Amazi-Girl, or the one with shades, and then I noticed the knuckles.
Clearly, you mean that the dog is the douche, and that Amazi-girl hit it because it was a douche rather than for it being a dog. Yes, clearly the dog (who I’ve named El Churro) had it coming.
“And now you can’t even go out and touch random dogs anymore! They’re only dogs! Where are our civil rights going! We have freedoms that need to be protected! We should be safe from aggressive responses to our actions! The liberal agenda is clearly at work here!”
Oh, I’m sorry. I’m thinking of a different “news” provider, I think.
I don’t think I ever once used the ringtone on my old-ass clamshell phone because the vibration was loud enough to wake me up and alert me anytime I needed it. The one thing I missed when upgrading to a smartphone.
I’m super right-handed, but I routinely use my phone with my left hand.
I mean, part of that is almost certainly because I’m completely deaf on the right side, so I *have* to use the phone with that hand. Muscle memory just takes over, even when I’m texting, I’d guess.
But the hand she uses her phone with doesn’t have to be her dominant hand is what I’m saying. Even with two personalities involved.
Right and I’m left handed but can’t remember ever using my phone with my dominant hand… Besides you usually punch with both hands, you just don’t punch *as hard* with your non-dominant hand (usually and even that is iffy, my right arm is stronger than my left).
Amazi-girl: You were looking for a way to change your life. You could not do this on your own. All the ways you wish you could be? That’s me. I act like you want to act, I fight like you want to fight. I am smart, capable, but most importantly, I am free in all the ways that you are not.
Amber: No, this is impossible. This is crazy.
Amazi-girl: People do it every day. They talk to themselves, they see themselves as they’d like to be. But they don’t have the courage you have — to just run with it! Naturally, you still wrestle with it, so sometimes you’re still you. Other times, you imagine yourself being me. Little by little, you’re just letting yourself become….Amazi-girl
We’re referring to the movie Fight Club, in which (Spoilers for a famous twist from an 18-year-old movie!), the big reveal is that the protagonist has DID, with the villain literally being the embodiment of his toxic masculinity. Amazi-girl comes from Amber’s rage, but it’s similar enough to warrant the jokes.
Sadly, Fight Club, which is a movie that’s very blatantly about how toxic masculinity and alt-right movements are bad and destructive, has ended up becoming the official movie of bros everywhere.
it is? huh, I didn’t get any of that when I watched it… but I hadn’t heard the phrase “toxic masculinity” until many years after watching it. it really seemed to glorify the fighting, from what little I remember…
“Toxic Masculinity” as a phrase wasn’t in vogue in the 90s, but it’s very clearly what Tyler represents. Most of the first act of the movie is about how Edward Norton doesn’t feel like a man because he lives in a consumerist society, and he idealizes the “manliness is fighting” idea. And while the movie doesn’t mention race explicity, Tyler does tell an all-white audience that they need to find a cause to fight for because manliness means fighting and they don’t have any real social problems. (Also it stars Edward “American History X” Norton)
I find the movie interesting in that it’s a lot more relevant to 2017 than it was to 1999 in a bunch of ways. It’s practically an allegory for the rise of the internet Trump brigade, with Edward Norton playing Moot, Tyler being Anonymous, pranky counterculture Fight Club being 4chan, and the terrorist Project Mayhem that arises out of the most hardcore Fight Club members being /pol/ or the alt-right. Then the Pixies play as Trump’s elected and Moot decides to try living as a normal, non-terrible person. There’s even a bit about theoretically Fight Club comes from economic anxiety but not really.
I’d recommend giving the movie a watch if it’s on and you have the mental development to understand that the terrorist blowing up buildings is a bad guy no matter how cool his jacket is. Sad that not everyone does
or one of the shades of grey in-between? there are a lot of those, and that’s where my experiences fall. there’s always some breadcrumbs leading to memories I’ve locked up, but sometimes I can forget the breadcrumbs exist until something reminds me, and sometimes following them can be physically painful, or my thoughts slide off and I forget that I was trying to remember something.
DID is, as far as I’m aware, impossible to develop by any means other than early childhood trauma. Amber seems to have some kind of dissociative condition, but DID seems unlikely since the Amazi-Girl persona developed in the year prior to college.
Isn’t there some long white dog hair in the closet in the AG uniform that wasn’t there a day or two ago? Or is AG also the kind of hero who uses the lint roller without needing to be reminded?
well, it’s not exactly a well-understood diagnosis. wikipedia makes it sound fictitious, and hollywood makes it all about an Evil Alter… there’s so much misinformation out there, so much that hasn’t even been researched properly at all…
it wasn’t until Cerberus’ comments that I had any idea what dissociation was *actually* like, or that it was responsible for my mental blocks and stuff…
Honestly, I don’t think Amber’s condition is a particularly realistic depiction of real mental illness either, given that real people with mental illness aren’t *crime-fighting superheroes*.
And I’m a little concerned that this *is* becoming an evil alter-ego of Amber, too, since Amazi-girl has been shown to be significantly more violent than Amber and is now doing things Amber apparently doesn’t want to do.
Given the compressed timescale of the comic, there’s basically no way for this story to end that’s even mildly realistic, either, since it’ll take years of real time to make it to Christmas in-comic, so either this is just the new status quo for Amber for the rest of the comic, or she’s going to make a miraculous unrealistic weekend recovery.
well, we *did* have magical instant-action antidepressant medication, so maybe we’ll have magical instant meditation/therapy session that gets Amber and Amazi-girl talking to each other?
No one but Billie, because nobody but Billie actually cared about Ruth because she actively drove everyone else away. Which is totally realistic actually, when it comes to people we don’t like we have that momentary ‘oh no that’s awful’ and then go right back to our lives unless it triggers something personal for us.
I know two people for whom Wellbutrin had a positive effect within hours. One describes it as “Things became three-dimensional again.” IIUC Wellbutrin affects two neurotransmitters, so maybe other antidepressants are different? Or maybe a few people react faster than most? But it is possible for antidepressants to act quickly.
I mean, it’s the superheroing that’s unrealistic, regardless of whether there’s alters involved, so I don’t think it makes the portrayal of DID unrealistic?… It’s not like the comic implied Amazi-girl has powers or something that AMber doesn’t??? It’s been pretty explicitly shown that Amber has the exact same physical prowess, but different mental prowess, which is the exact point of DID if I understand it correctly?
Amazi-Girl isn’t evil, but she’s also never been good either. She was always just a way for Amber to vent her violent urges. People celebrated her because they projected their own beliefs onto her and because her targets for her violence were socially acceptable.
Also, I haven’t noticed knuckle bruises in the past, which makes me wonder if perhaps this, shall we say, ‘unsupervised’ Amazigirl is a bit less restrained with regards to the amount of force used?
We’ve seen them before. Another case where it looked like Amber was noticing them and wondering where they came from, but that time she shook it off quickly.
I suspect they’re just not normally drawn in, unless they’re being emphasized.
TBH, I tried to research DID for a university project something like 12 years ago, and the most current research I was finding at the time WAS that most cases of it were faked for attention or induced by the psychiatrist. Now, that felt wrong to me (part of the reason I picked DID for the project was that my boyfriend at the time had distinct multiple personalities ) but I was a first year University student, just barely out of high school.
However, I did mention that this was a solid 12 years ago, so I’m sure research is changed now. (I’m also a little horrified now that I’ve put a number to that time period, I swear time is speeding up.)
The research has definitely very much changed, although if you look for it you can still find ppl arguing that all cases are iatrogenic or factitious. Of course u can also find ppl arguing that we’re all possessed by demons so i mean 👉👉
If you’re interested in seeing *how* the Literature has changed i’d rec did-research.org for making psych academia shockingly uh. parsable.
and thanks for reminding me, I *finally* made a patreon account.
now I just have to figure out how to add webcomics… it’s harassing me about social media, which is both unwanted and pointless, I only follow like 3 comic-related twitter accounts and I only log in once every few months.
…well, I had Willis’ patreon page bookmarked, yay 🙂
probably going to be months before I hunt down most of the other comics I read… or would be reading if I rebooted into linux… I still haven’t found an online replacement for Akregator, most feed readers are optimized for text instead of images.
it’s a shame Cerberus isn’t around, I wanna hear her thoughts on this… Actually if you thought it was just you, then you must have missed her awesome comments on older strips, maybe go look through the Amber tags for DID discussion 🙂
Where is she by the way? I’ve been kinda sporadic lately, so I just assumed I was missing her posts or that she was busy with school. I hope everything is alright.
They’ve been under medical care for a while – some kind of very serious stomach complaint, IIRC. They’re probably still feeling a bit ‘bleh’ and I wouldn’t blame her for not wanting to use up what little energy they probably can dredge up right now on non-critical stuff.
and this shortly after dealing with antidepressant withdrawal (at the same time as me!), and potential other illness that I hope turned out to just be the stomach bug… yeah, she deserves lots of rest 🙂
Yeah, I’d’ve gone with Dorothy, Carla, or Rose as the new Amazi_Girl (All for different reasons) except or Amber’s bruised knuckles. Still all in the running, if the knuckles are a coincidence, and dependent on where Amber stashed the costume before (presumably) disemboweling Ryan.
Cerberus has been talking about how starting to lose time is a serious concern for her and would be a sign her dissociation is getting worse since… forever. So yeah, it’s probably the latter )=
Whaaaat? It’s just a significant period of dime during which your body is engaged in activity without your consent or awareness wherein the entity controlling your body believes you to be an evil monster and thus refuses to discuss this with you. I’m sure it’ll resolve itself peacefully on its own.
So, it’s finally reached the point where Amber and Amazi-Girl are two totally different women who coincidentally share a body. They don’t even share memories anymore! That’s just about as bad as it can get, I think! 🙁
Well, they’re alive and unhurt (except some bruised knuckes) and last we checked in were on speaking terms (the huge chairs scene), so it could definitely be worse.
Could definitely be worse. She could have more than just one alter (and I’m not talking about 2, I’m talking about upwards of 10) and AG at least seems to recognise her appearance as similar to Amber’s as otherwise mirrors could confuse the hell out of her on a regular basis.
Like, not saying it is not bad, but I am saying there are definitely ways this could theoretically escalate into being more difficult to manage if Willis wished to endlessly torture us for all of time.
^^^
it could always be worse, and Amber’s situation isn’t really up there imho
like, she has friends, hasn’t done anything too badly illegal (not anything she didnt make a full decision to do, as a principle, with both alters’ consent), has a concerned mom and a place to live, hasn’t been involuntarily hospitalized in a shit place (I know some hospitals are cool and involuntary hospitalizations can save lives but there are also some that are bad and make things worse)
Amber is Not Okay mentally, but external situation-wise, she’s still mostly okay, and that means she can climb out of the hole. Hopefully
I realize that Amber probably has the Amazi-Girl social media alert on her phone in case her identity gets revealed, but part of me wonders if Amber knew this might happen.
There are however many threads going “AAA SPLIT PERSONALITY I DID NOT SEE THIS COMING”
I guess not everyone obsessively reads comments for every strip but just. Wow. Yes. New information that totally wasn’t brought up by Amber every single time she’s mentioned Amazi-girl lately. Totally.
Like when she flat out told people they weren’t the same. People who actually knew her “secret”.
Like when Amber and Amazi-Girl had a conversation.
All the stuff about Amber being a monster and Amazi-Girl being the good one.
To be fair, it’s been progressing and the disassociation has been getting worse. Originally they were much closer and it was more like a secret identity with different mannerisms. This is the closest we’ve seen to confirmation they’re not sharing memories anymore.
Both 1 and 2 are dissociations I imagine, and that’s NOT BEEN SUBTLE ACTUALLY
Amber has been talking about herself and Amazi-girl as seriously actually different people since she freaked out on Danny kissing her
I don’t know about knuckle callouses but as a sixty-year old man I have knuckle arthritis. One knuckle has been broken three times; I treat doorknobs, phones, tools etc. with a lot of respect.
You know, with almost any other webcomic writer, if dissociative identity disorder came up as a plot point, I’d be cringing hard.
But I trust Willis will handle it well.
And now I am worried about role playing games like D&D, where you are encouraged to immerse yourself in a totally different personality…
It’s all fun and games… until someone decides that their True Self is Chaotic Evil.
strangely enough, I’ve never been *able* to roleplay. some part of me freaks out about it being “not me”, and if I push too hard I just end up having a meltdown and losing access to words.
“Impostor” doesn’t seem very likely, since said impostor would have to know that Amazi-Girl was out of action. So… Dina, Dorothy, or Danny?
Absent from the circumstantial evidence of Amber’s bruised knuckles, there’d be the possibility that someone (likely Dorothy) is posting “fake news” with photoshopped pics. But there’s those knuckles….
There’s still the possibility it’s Dorothy under the costume; less likely Danny. Amber stashed it somewhere so Becky could move in. As Malaya pointed out, Dorothy, Sierra, Dina, and Amber are basically our roommates with a shared half-bath. Why couldn’t she have stashed it with Dorothy?
Or Danny may have been sleep-heroing in the costume that was left with Ethan. Or, just a “fake news” story. Point being there are other possibilities than the obvious.
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Sometimes you say Damn You Willis because something might either be ominous or innocuous.
This… this actually strikes dread through me. This strip tells me that Amber might not be sharing memories with Amazi-Girl anymore. It would make sense, especially with recent psychological stress starting to weigh down on her even more… looking back, the shots of her bruised knuckles in older strips suddenly seem much more dreadful.
This could be really fucking bad if a portion of Amber’s mind is actually out of her control, making decisions backed by separate, distinct motives that Amber herself can’t keep tabs on. What could happen to whomever Amazi-Girl defines as an enemy? What happens if Amazi-Girl begins feeling threatened by the prospect of not existing? Could Danny or Ethan be in danger in the future? Perhaps Sal? Amber herself?? SOMEONE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD GET THIS GIRL TO A DOCTOR.
Or maybe this is just a strip in which David Willis introduces a puppy as a new character, obviously destined to rival Dina in the popularity poll, who knows.
Is that’s what’s going on ? I thought it was her just thinking “Yeah being a vigilante is as good as an idea as I thought”.
Yeah, I’m totally getting an “I have no memory of that but my knuckles sure look like they’ve hit a dog-stealing douche.” vibe from this.
Or, for anyone looking for a tl;dr-
OH NO AMBER AND AMAZI-GIRL MIGHT BE SPLIT PERSONALITIES, THIS COULD BE MAJORLY BAD, or, alternatively, adorable dog for best character.
When did we start needing TLDRs for two and a half column inches of text?
Sry, can u tl;dr that?
😛
tl;dr: When did that become too much to read?
tl;dr: Why U shorten the short?
tl;dr: Huh???
tl;dr:?
tl;dr: tl;dr!
tl;dw!love the ‘maybe’ >+> this hasn’t been new information since when Amber freaked out on Danny kissing the wrong alter
The “not sharing memories” part is new. Assuming that’s what this means.
Could explain why we haven’t seen AG since before the stabbings – she’s been active, but Amber hasn’t known about it.
yea true
tho I was citing “OH NO AMBER AND AMAZI-GIRL MIGHT BE SPLIT PERSONALITIES, THIS COULD BE MAJORLY BAD”
Then, there’s the part where AG is kinda crushing on Sal, and Amber started freaking over that.
If the puppy isn’t in the tags it isn’t a future character, like the squirrel.
Willis has been known to retroactively add tags.
Not only has he retroactively added tags, he’s sometimes even asked for fan input on naming.
I hearby recommend the dog be named El Churro.
Or maybe Chester, if you wanna be boring about it.
I support El Churro and his quest for snacks and snuggles.
Dog on a quest? Must be Dog Quixote, surely?
Shit, now I have to get a dog and name it El Churro.
Better make sure it’s a Pomeranian/Chihuahua mix, then. It needs to look the part.
Those are actually an already established breed, believe it or not.
..and they’re kinda adorable looking.
http://www.petguide.com/breeds/dog/pom-chi/
Doggy McDogFace?
Agreed and oh fuuuuuuuuuuuuck
Same. It took me a minute of wondering what the punchline of Amber’s reaction was. Then I realized that the punchline was my gut getting hit because Amber can’t even remember punching someone.
Someone else could be amazing girling it up. Someone who looks like her and knows she’d be out of commission a while… maybe.
I don’t think so – Amber is seeing the scrapes on her knuckles indicating that in fact she *did* do that…it’s definitely her.
I agree that Amber’s increasing dissociation is bad news, but Jesus Christ, did you have to make it into a “this person with mental illness might be a danger to OTHERS” spiel? Because that’s bullshit. I’m worried about Amber.
thank you
I was legitimately shocked to be the first person to point this out. The comments section is weird tonight.
I got halfway through a comment then deleted it :/ I’m glad you posted.
SHE PUNCHED A FRIKKING DOGNAPPER, PEOPLE
WHAT IS THIS SLIPPERY SLOPE OF VIOLENCE YOU’RE WORRIED ABOUT
First disassociated individuals will want to attack humans who violate the sanctity of self-possession of another being as well as violating the rights entailed by the social concept of human ownership over this being and the legal statutes supporting said concept, in the process tearing apart familial bonds and abusing helpless creatures and causing widespread emotional harm :breath: and then next they’ll want to attack dogs!
..there’s a shared concept there! So as we all know, there’s only a slippery slope between the two things! THAT’S HOW IT WORKS.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to see if a banana and some gymnastics can magic me up a banana split.
I’m not worried about Amazigirl running amuck. I’m suddenly worried about Amber falling apart. Amber is a smart girl and will develop a sudden interest in researching disassociation and then get help. Looks at title of the comic and shakes fist at the sky again.
She’s not the mentally unstable vigilante this campus wants but… Actually, the campus doesn’t really want or need vigilantes of any kind…
yes. thank you.
I’m not sure where that came from. I don’t see anything about “this person with mental illness might be a danger to OTHERS” in the comic. Other than AG’s ongoing vigilantism, which is already an established trait. Dognappers are a better target for face-punching than some of her previous choices.
Amber’s reaction, as I read it, is from having no memory of punching a dognapper or going out as AG at all, not from suddenly thinking AG is a danger to others.
er, GoblinScribe wasn’t replying to the comic, they were replying to CandidCanid.
Oops. It was so far down from the parent, I forgot it was nested. Sorry, KC.
I made the exact same mistake until I rechecked twice, so don’t feel bad!
Except, she might be? I mean yeah I know that’s part of the stigma but in this case it’s an alter that literally goes out and kicks ass without amber’s judgement. Then again I haven’t trusted amber’s judgement in years so who knows amazi-girl might be the better personality
Well, if you think that, maybe you do trust Amber’s judgment. She agrees with you.
I’m sorry. I don’t mean to paint anyone as a dangerous monster. I just feel that Amazi-Girl has acted less than noble or fair in the past (she tried to incite Sal to violence on several occasions, for instance). I’m worried that Amazi-Girl might be willing to rationalize doing something like that again, which would be very very bad.
CandidCanid is also expressly worried about Amber, just also everyone else too…
I recently finished the archives (this is my second post, heh) and my impression is that Amazi-Girl is dangerously fixated on law. Lawbreakers are valid targets for Amber’s violent impulses. That’s the entire, noble, purpose of the persona… She feels a need to hurt people, but channels that towards justice. I’m not being sarcastic or dismissive, I can relate to this coping mechanism more than I’d like.
But people already worry about breaking the rules near Amber, much less Amazi-Girl. Even “victimless” crimes like getting a little drunk with friends. Amber maturely expresses disapproval. I’m going to be frank, I think Amazi-Girl might go a lot farther, particularly if “Amber” is in a full-on fugue instead of playing a character.
Amber having a dissosiative identity was my first thought. Though there’s no reason to think Amazi-Girl (assuming she actually is a different identity) would be a threat to anyone other than dog-stealing assholes.
I’d like to think Willis is above the whole “mentally ill person is violent and scary” trope.
What if it’s actually Dorothy impersonating her? The whole “X hero is more than a person, it’s a symbol that must be kept alive even after the original loses their will or capacity to don the cape”.
Ooh! I like this a lot. I do.
I mean, I think Dorothy was probably just, legit up late studying, but: potential!
I don’t think so – Amber is noticing her own scraped knuckles in those last couple of panels, so I think it actually is her….
The Dorothy senerio would be a huge relief. I suppose that because of her already sore knuckles from beating Ryan with her sharp phone she could be realizing it couldn’t be her that did it, but I don’t think that’s the way to bet. Hithertofor Amber has wanted a disociation between Amber and Amazigirl that wasn’t really there and now she she has evidence there is one. It certainly isn’t a boring story.
It might be scary for her now, if she starts losing her own personality.
Like Batman, the playboy, billionaire, philanthropist are basically an act for Bruce to blend in. His true personality is Batman. And that is contrast to someone like Iron Man/Tony Stark, who still keeps his original personality, albeit matured after several intense situation.
You don’t need to be a nazi to steal a dog that cute. Just desperate and bad.
how did we get to the point where doing violence to Nazis is controversial? Pepperidge Farm and i both remember when the person who did the most violence to Nazis got a medal
Was it a peace treaty or something?
By now, of course, everyone who isn’t an actual communist has been called a nazi by someone. According to Valdimir Putin everyone west of Odessa is a nazi. That simplifies the decisions quite a lot.
Don’t forget, communists are Nazis, too, thanks to the Horseshoe Theory Lucky Charms marshmallow!
Oh, also, there’s a big difference between “Obama is a Nazi because he likes socialized health care” and “Dick Spencer is a Nazi because he supports a white ethnostate and thinks nonwhites are genetically inferior”.
And that’s exactly why we have to think twice before we issue a general permission to punch nazis.
Agreed! So here’s a clarification: Punch ACTUAL Nazis. It’s not really that hard. “Nazi” is not a relative term. It’s, like, a set of specific opinions about how to treat other human beings. Anyone who calls themselves a member of the alt-right most likely falls into the camp.
Soup-nazis and surf-nazis: don’t punch.
Nazi-nazis threatening violence: do punch.
In-between, use your judgement.
Invisible dogs you do not see: Don’t punch, pronounce carefully.
As long as we’re being careful to define “nazi” as “literally an actual nazi, like, espousing views that promote violence against Jews, POC, and other marginalized groups”, think we should be fine.
Punch first. Call Nazi later.
I think it spawns from a few issues:
1. It’s one thing when actual violence is being done to others and condoned by war.
2. People have gotten into the habit of dubbing people Nazi’s over any disagreement. If we follow that through with “punching Nazi’s is okay” we can see the the downward spiral.
3. Just because someone has a genuinely shit opinion doesn’t mean violence is justified. The best response to disgusting speech is more speech. Shout them down, chew them out, call them whatever you want, but attacking them just make them feel like they’re in the right.
Don’t get me wrong, I truly believe these people are the scum of the earth, but they should be dragged into the light and be shown for what they are. People should try not to sacrifice their ideals and higher ground over such worthless garbage.
“The best response to disgusting speech is more speech.”
that’s exactly what they want you to do too.
No. The best response to actual nazism is rendering them unable to speak. Whether that’s refusing to give them a platform, shouting nonsense over them when they open their mouth, or straight up decking them out cold, removing them from the discussion is most important. Because if they are allowed to speak, that legitimizes their position and gives it a place in the discussion it truly does not deserve.
My personal favourite is cranking up music by Jewish artists whenever a Nazi tries to speak. The person in question did so with a boombox but I imagine a phone would be acceptable too.
I assure you, the nazis will convince themselves they’re in the right no matter how people respond to them.
Shouting them down, drowning them out, and running them out of town are all preferable when those options are viable, but the numbers required aren’t always there, and it’s dangerous to leave a nazi unpunched when numbers aren’t clearly against them.
Punching someone for their beliefs is not a good habit for a democracy.
Calling that “for their beliefs” is not a habit of a person who is being genuine and honest.
Are you saying that punching happens because the puncher finds it gratifying, whether or not the punchee has it coming?
This is a disturbing concept. Were this true, the world would be full of violence.
Oh, wait . . .
Nazi “beliefs” are, in fact, violent agendas aiming to exterminate the majority of the planet’s population, and should be treated as such. Any gratification garnered in doing so is entirely irrelevant.
Exactly. Tolerating the intolerant will only lead to greater intolerance, and is therefor counterproductive
knowledge of history is a good start to understanding as to why the “punch a Nazi” thing is opposed. During the Weimar Republic in post WWI Germany, there was an organization known as Antifaschistische Aktion, a communist backed group in Germany set up several laws and resorted to violence and intimidation for the sake of crushing Hitler’s political movement. However the violence had the opposite effect, people grew sympathetic twords Hitler’s brown shirts and he used this sympathy to generate more influence, which eventually led to him becoming the country’s leader. He then used the very same laws that Antifaschistische Aktion helped make to solidify his uncontestable rule and violently oppress the masses.
Many people see the current “punch a Nazi” and see parallels to Antifaschistische Aktion, and want the practice to be stopped knowing full well that history could very well repeat itself and this wave of violence could breathe life back into a long dead corpse.
Furthermore the term “Nazi” has become very nebulous as of late and the accusation gets thrown around very aggressively with little comparison to actual Nazi behavior, this would lead to several people who hold no respect or interest in following Nazi ideology getting harmed because someone decided to brand them as one.
Some helpful food for thought.
also a handy guide: https://imgur.com/gallery/4FG5F
(despite the “SJW” line)
“…without presenting any legitimate threat to anyone or their property”… spouting Nazi ideology is inherently a declaration of intent to do violence.
no no let’s have some respectful debates with the guys screaming about ethnic cleansing, everyone knows the best way to defeat the far-right is to give it as much neutral media attention as possible and count on that signal boosting to do the trick
that’s why it worked so well last year!
Not to play devil’s advocate, but the attention given was decidedly not neutral. Instead, they were shamed, they were called out, and anyone who even tried to say “hey, let’s stay neutral,” or, god-forbid, said “they have a right to say these things, whether we agree or not,” was shouted down and summarily lumped with them, in the basket of deplorables, which pushed MORE neutral people to side with them. If we were to, instead, have peaceful, RESPECTFUL debates, maybe people would see that they don’t have any good points.
Or, are you afraid that maybe we’re the ones who don’t have any good points, and people would flock to those that we call nazis?
If you think coverage of Trump was neutral, you have a weird definition of it. They were dismissive and lolsy, yes, but actual constant fact-checking was unseen outside of maybe NPR. It’s not “neutral” to just repeat somebody’s bullshit without calling out that it’s bullshit. Additionally, have you SEEN the media coverage of Nazis lately? Look at the shit the New York Times is putting out. Dapper young fascists indeed.
Also, we had, like, a dozen “peaceful, respectful debates” with the bastard. He won the presidency.
“Not to be devil’s advocate…” Then don’t. As Aamer Rahman put it, “Who forced you to sign up as a Volunteer Nazi Defense Advocate?”
There has been plenty of neutral mainstream media attention. There has also been a lot of genuine discussion as to whether debating fascism politely is a good idea, useless, or outright dangerous. Personally, I believe people like Anita Sarkeesian who have dealt majorly with the people in the new alt-right, people in the punk scenes who have experience with older neo-nazis, people like Umberto Eco who lived through WWII Europe, and the neo-nazis themselves when they talk about it: fascism as a belief system is predicated in part on the idea that action is a moral necessity and that non-violence is a weakness to be exploited.
That is what we are afraid of. We are afraid that the Nazis are, yes, using the threat of the “violent left” as a way of recruiting those on the fence, alongside using the reluctance of moderates to act as a way to gain political ground, alongside using every other tactic available to them to gain power, just like they always do. We are afraid that they will gain power and do horrible things, and that people will pay more attention to whether or not we’re being polite about disagreeing with them than anything they’re actually doing.
People keep talking about “but people were mean on the internet and shouted at people who are neutral about Nazis so of course people are more sympathetic to the Nazis” as if that’s some kind of rational position. It isn’t. White supremacy is factually incorrect and morally wrong. It is not respectful to the many, many people it harms to treat it as if it’s on the same moral level as not supporting white supremacy.
Neat image. Here’s a better one:
https://i.redd.it/uedawtfzqbgz.jpg
The problem I have with this guide is that this is often somehow considered “peacefully minding their own business without presenting any legitimate threat to anyone or their property.”
Also, it’s written by a right-wing edgelord who thinks we just call people Nazis for fun.
As I recall, though, that’s the Republicans’ job.
The issue with that is, most of the nazis currently walking around insist they are not nazis and only want to have a peaceful, rational discussion by tiki torchlight on why Jews and POC should be killed.
Funny enough, those who tell us to “remember our history” rarely wish to remember Cable Street.
Nor how the whole reason Nazis took power wasn’t being too hostile, it was pardoning their leader and giving him a government post. Centrists, not radicals, were responsible for Hitler’s rise.
A noteworthy difference is that no one back then had real context for what the nazis wanted and were going to do. Currently that context has been forcibly carved into society’s memory. I think they’re less likely to get pity this time around.
“Nazi” has gotten kind of nebulous. So let’s make it clear – it should mean people who believe in white supremacy, that slavery was a good way to approach blacks, that Hitler was right about Jews, and the like. They deserve to be punched.
Sure, they try to use being punched to build sympathy. They also try to use not being punched to build power and intimidate their opponents and would-be victims. They are hoping for a fight and are sure to get it, either because you fight them by choice now or out of desperation later.
To be clear: pre-emptive strikes are a questionable endeavor, but not when someone is vowing to eliminate you as soon as they can do so.
And if we’re really worried about building sympathy, maybe it would help to stop telling people they should feel bad when Nazis get punched.
Knowledge of history is a good thing. Maybe this time around we could use our knowledge of history to not side with the people who want to take over the world and commit genocide over the people who think that’s a big problem? In fact, maybe if people find themselves more threatened by the people angry about genocide because of the hypothetical chance they might extend that to other conservative groups, than the people threatening genocide, we could suggest that that is in itself a little worrying?
@Profnekko: THANK YOU.
Nazi’s deserved to be punched, imo. But that’s not the same thing as saying that punching Nazi’s is *wise*. Many people focused on giving people what they deserve / dishing out justice fail to factor long-term consequences into the equation (or factor in the number of people who don’t agree with you, etc).
The wisest path is whichever one gets as many people as possible safely out of the woods of these dark times. Punching Nazi’s impedes that goal. Ignoring Nazi’s *definitely* impedes that goal. So don’t do either.
Interesting you bring that up, since Hitler himself disagreed with you. According to him, the ONLY thing that could have stopped him was if his enemies understood his goals from the beginning and crushed the nucleus of the movement from the get go.
Right? It’s like there’s some sort of fundamental difference between speech and physical violence, who can conceive of such a thing?!? /S
Incitement to violence is free speech. The “fundamental difference” you refer to is a squiggly line drawn in crayon.
Incitement to violence is not protected speech. There are other exceptions – some built into the clause, some established by SCOTUS
We are in agreement. Therefore, punch Nazis. 🙂
(I actually meant to write that incitement is *not* free speech, so I apologize for the lack of clarity, but I’m glad we seem to agree anyways!)
Why would you ever think that everyone who understands that incitement to violence is *not* free speech agrees with you on “punching Nazis”? At best that would be vigilantism, at worst it’s actual fascism. The fact you’re acting like a fascist to a horrible person doesn’t vindicate you.
Oh, sorry, you don’t seem to know what fascism is. That’s leading to some confusion here, so to clarify:
Hatespeech and incitement to violence =/= “dissenting opinions”.
Incitement to violence is both violent and illegal. If a man screams for the death of the Jews, punching him is, in fact, an act of community defense (or self-defense, if you are Jewish).
Fascism, being an inherently violent ideology, cannot contain “peaceful protesters”. A man who marches down the street calling for ethnic cleansing is a violent fascist, and should be removed from the streets for the safety of a just society.
“Tolerating intolerance” is the domain of cowards and privileged white liberals.
https://i.redd.it/uedawtfzqbgz.jpg
“Incitement to violence is both violent and illegal.”
makes sense.
“If a man screams for the death of the Jews, punching him is, in fact, an act of community defense”
wait, hold on, that doesn’t follow. if someone’s doing something illegal, punching them isn’t automatically okay. if they’re an immediate threat it might be fine, but otherwise, ideally the legal system would deal with them.
when the legal system is routinely ignoring those fuckers, then it gets muddier, though.
And that’s where we do run into trouble. Because while I agree that it would be *much* better if the law would handle this, due to a combination of badly-run police departments (who sometimes even sympathize with the fascists!) and some questionable court rulings (calling for the deaths of all Muslims is actually not regarded by the US justice system as “incitement”), the legal system *is* ignoring those fuckers. They are merrily marching down our streets, just as they did back before the war. So what are we allowed to do about it?
I don’t have a great answer to that. But I don’t throw stones at those who do (ooh, double-meaning).
“‘community defense’ whatever that is supposed to mean”
Spoken like a guy who’s never had to worry about having his temple burned down because some white dude thought it was a mosque.
Awkward use of fallacies, there. “Ad hominem” only applies if background is irrelevant, and here I was making a point: You don’t seem to understand how fascists work if you assume that they are not threats to a community, and I’m guessing that they don’t come after you very often if you think fighting back is itself “fascism”. You don’t understand how fighting back against fascists is community defense? Yeah, I’ll happily say that you’re privileged on at least a few axes, and feel pretty safe in that assumption.
Anyways, I’ve said my piece and made my peace. tl;dr, fascism is inherently violent and those who preach peace to it are bringing daisies to a gunfight. While a pacifist myself, I do not resent the minorities who feel they must act aggressively to protect themselves from the violent activists swarming the streets.
We need to get the nazis off the streets. If the police won’t do it in accordance with sensible anti-incitement laws (which Europe has quite successfully instated without any of the “slippery slope fascism” nonsense you centrists fret over), what are we supposed to do? The justice system won’t protect us. I’m tired of ivory tower centrists lecturing those in the trenches about how, if they’d only be polite and civil, the fascists would surely realize what fools they are and fade back into obscurity.
Nazis have been on the rise in large part because we got complacent. I will hear out tactical arguments about the strategic failures of violence as a political strategy, but the “If you punch a fascist, it makes you a fascist” argument is so morally simplistic, most pre-schoolers would laugh at it. You are making a fool of yourself.
G’night!
Can I level with you?
I’ve been sexually harassed in public, which is a pretty blatant threat to my bodily safety. Disabled women (like myself) are 8 times more likely to be the victim of a violent attack than able-bodied women, who themselves are 3 times more likely to be victims than men.
Yet for all the #meToo hashtags, and all the awareness being raised about sexual harassment, nobody is going around saying it’s okay to punch the Harvey Winestiens and Louis CK’s of the world. It’s almost like, in pretty much every context, people accept that a threat of violence cannot be lawfully and in good conscience met with violence. If someone yells at you and tells you to stand there and masturbates into a plant, it’s unlawful to kick him in the dick. Terry Crews talks about this pretty explicitly when he went on Good Morning America to talk about being groped and sexually harassed at a party.
The laws are clear, and they remain clear even though perpetrators of sexual assault and harassment are rarely convicted.
So, I guess what bothers me about the whole “punch a Nazi” thing is that Nazi’s aren’t special. Nazi’s aren’t the only ones who get off on power and have violent, extreme ideologies. But people advocate for “punch a Nazi” rather than “punch a rapist” or “punch a misogynist” because nobody wants to admit that the people they admire or like really, genuinely deserve to be punched. Or, on some level, they think women don’t really count as people, not the way they do.
Men get these power-vigilante fantasies on punching villains, but women don’t. Because we have to focus on how to actually stay safe in the real world. That means not escalating violence. That means prioritizing escape over combat. That means taking security measures, getting big dogs, staying in groups, and listening to the “whisper network.” That means, sometimes, making police reports and filing protection orders.
Captain America fantasies go out the window when you’re actually in danger on a day to day basis. When people are saying, “We need to prioritize de-escalating violence over vigilante justice,” it isn’t because we aren’t sympathetic to those who hate Nazi’s. We also hate Nazi’s. It’s just that we know we’re the most vulnerable, and if things become more violent, the fallout is going to hit us the worse. So please. Don’t put us in that position.
Until we live in a society when one out of six racial minority men have been victims of racial violence, you cannot equate being a male racial minority to being a woman, especially a racial minority woman. If you truly understood what it felt like to live in a violent culture posed against you, you would not be advocating matching violence for violence so blithely.
ETA: After some research, I have discovered that the statistics show that close to 1 in 6 black men have been victims of racial violence in America. I apologize for my ignorance, and for trying to use an “oppression olympics” tactic. That’s a lazy rhetorical point, and it also definitely is hurtful by diminishing the hardships faced by black people in America.
Uh, so turns out violent bigotry sucks across the board. Sorry about that.
There is some logic to be had that responding with violence is not actually a realistic option for many people. And it’s true that Nazis aren’t special, but from my perspective as someone who’s been abused and harassed and who has spoken to a lot of other people in the same position, there are a lot of people who will happily, openly advocate violence against people who commit those types of violence. There is in fact a pretty loud, if not at all powerful, group of people who will openly say that there is no situation in which murdering your abuser or rapist is morally wrong, only situations in which it’s not worth the consequences. Because there is some shit that crosses the line, and if society continues to be incapable of punishing it or even showing that it gives a damn, protecting yourself is based on what works.
And the other thing is- to be perfectly clear on the relationship here- a lot of the people advocating violence against Nazis are in groups the Nazis advocate violence against, including some women. De-escalating is great when it works. Getting Nazis out of power by peaceful means is great when it works. And I think we can totally discuss what means we as a society are capable of using and what means are actually effective- that’s a way more productive debate than whether fascism is acceptable or not. But it’s not just a power fantasy. It’s a sincere belief, often based on evidence (whether or not you agree that evidence is conclusive), that other methods are not working.
Okay, bottom line it’s an offshoot from a more general principle: Thoughts and words should not be answered with violence (unless the words are a specific, immediate, credible threat). Same with political leanings.
In the case of these particular words and these particular politics, that seems a bit overnoble, but that’s one of those slippery slopes that it’s damned hard to come back from. Replace “Nazi” with almost any other ideology, like, say, “Green”, and ask “Why is it wrong to punch a Green in the face?” There’s a bit of a false equivalence there in that Greens aren’t defined by actively seeking to disenfranchise, discredit, harm, or kill people based on ethnicity, but that’s still where the conceptual lines are drawn.
… and for the record, I’m not entirely endorsing this particular line of reasoning, just explaining it. I can waver back and forth on that point from day to day. Mostly I’m in the “don’t punch nazis because it’s bad tactics that play into their hands” camp.
I appreciate your good-faith breakdown of the matter, and your not-bullshit reason for falling on the side you do. Personally, as a pacifist, I abhor violence, but I hesitate to lecture minorities on what they choose to to when they are threatened. Guiding people against self-defense actually goes against my pacifist beliefs.
I believe that we would be better off without Nazis marching the streets, and from what I’ve seen, leftist groups like BLM get called “violent” no matter what they do, so I tend to disagree with the idea that Antifa somehow hurts our position. They call us violent if a lone sniper shoots three cops. They call us violent if a lone Black Bloc member punches a Nazi. They don’t really care about magnitude, especially not with the way the media hyperfocuses on minute but politically interesting crimes.
Taking a knee = “disrespectful”
Disrespectful ==> disloyal ==> treasonous ==> terrorist
The oppressed are not permitted to protest, no matter how mildly. They must be kept in their place, or chaos will follow (the elites will lose their privilege).
The controversy arose when people started calling people nazis when they weren’t actually nazis. That’s not to say that actual nazis haven’t been involved in recent things, but a lot of the people I’ve seen called nazis, by people I know in person and people online (to justify them being hit, if or when it came to it), have often not been remotely close to actual nazis, and sometimes even somewhat left of center.
And if they aren’t really nazis, we don’t support punching them. Do they support nazi ideology like “banning refugees”, “mass deportation”, “banning abortion”, “treating Islam like a dangerous religion”, etc? If not, we should be fine!
Why would Amazi-girl punch a dog in the face?
Maybe the dog looked like Hitler.
https://cdn.images.dailystar.co.uk/dynamic/1/photos/299000/52299.jpg
No no NO! KITler is a CAT. http://www.catsthatlooklikehitler.com/
Von Ribben-pup was Kitler’s Foreign Minister, though.
Based on true events.
https://satwcomic.com/art/cute-puppy.jpg
You too might be tempted to punch someone in the face if you saw them licking their balls in the middle of the street.
Consider how sleep-deprived and stressed a normal college is.
Now add in the demands of Amber’s vigilante escapades, especially given that we’ve seen that they often occur at night (ergo, potentially diminishing her sleep further).
Now add in the emotional and psychological stress she’s burdened with, which just got amplified by recent events.
Now imagine a dog keeping you up in the middle of the night with its yapping.
Now imagine you’re Amber.
Aaand now, imagine you’re Amazi-Girl, waking up to a public noise violation.
The fist of justice is swift and merciless.
The dog had it coming.
wait, does amber not remember doing that? or is she just disappointed by the bruising?
She’s SLEEP-JUSTICING!
She doesn’t remember because she didn’t do it. Amazi-Girl did it and, right now, they are two completely separate psyches sharing a body.
Oh no the dissociation
Oh shit, this is bad. That’s full-on split personality.
Also, Willis, thank you for including the shot of her split knuckles. My first thought was an impersonator, and that debate would have rendered these comments a trainwreck.
Yeah, that was my first thought. I was all ready with a comment about was it the cyborg Amazi-Girl, or the one with shades, and then I noticed the knuckles.
After that my next thought was “Oh shiiiii-!”
yeah, that or photoshop.
re: alt text, the other five are people who don’t know how to retweet properly ;P
And thank you (and the person a couple of comments above you) for making me realize what was going on in the comic because I was lost
Aww… Now I want to see that universe’s comment section, it sounds much more chaotic.
“#Amazi-Girl punched the douche, not the dog, if it wasn’t clear.”
What is your basis for this assertion?
Amazi-Girl would never interrupt a pooprodeo without good reason.
Well, a dognapper is worse than a douche, so..
Clearly, you mean that the dog is the douche, and that Amazi-girl hit it because it was a douche rather than for it being a dog. Yes, clearly the dog (who I’ve named El Churro) had it coming.
Clearly this is the time to get knuckle tattoos.
Oh fuck she doesn’t remember.
Oh dear
ehhh it’s probably not *her* blood?
(oh god the dissociation is real)
Oh yeah that poor dog napper….😒
Don’t worry about him. I’m sure next week’s New York Times will have a very sympathetic article about “The Dog Napper Next Door.”
“And now you can’t even go out and touch random dogs anymore! They’re only dogs! Where are our civil rights going! We have freedoms that need to be protected! We should be safe from aggressive responses to our actions! The liberal agenda is clearly at work here!”
Oh, I’m sorry. I’m thinking of a different “news” provider, I think.
Because Amazigirl’s never gone after people that doing, at best, petty crimes after a misplaced need for vengeance.
ohwait.
No, but this doesn’t seem to be one of those cases. She’s also dealt with more serious crimes in progress. This seems more like one of those.
Of course, we can’t at the moment speak to her internal motivation, since we haven’t seen Amazi-Girl since before the stabbings.
Well fuck this won’t end well.
Does this mean Amber doesn’t remember doing that stuff as Amazi-Girl now? Because that can’t be good.
Did Amer actually have a psychological break? Oh fuck.
How is she able to wake up to a vibration?
Depends on your sensitivity. If my phone’s on vibrate, the text message alerts still wake me up.
If I put my phone on the end table, the vibrate sounds louder than the ring tone.
I don’t think I ever once used the ringtone on my old-ass clamshell phone because the vibration was loud enough to wake me up and alert me anytime I needed it. The one thing I missed when upgrading to a smartphone.
Isn’t Amber right-handed? I thought you’d normally punch with your dominant hand.
I punch with EVERY PART OF MY BODY.
But really, I imagine she’s fairly ambidextrous when it comes to punching? And she’d just go with whatever hand was convenient.
people with dissociative identity disorder can sometimes have different dominant hands depending on who is in control
Interestingly, I’ve gone back and checked and Amber/Amazi-Girl normally hold their phone with their left hand. So maybe they’re left-handed.
Amazi-Girl has used her right hand to twirl a lasso though, so I’m not sure if there’s a consistency there or if there’s just ambidexterity involved.
I’m super right-handed, but I routinely use my phone with my left hand.
I mean, part of that is almost certainly because I’m completely deaf on the right side, so I *have* to use the phone with that hand. Muscle memory just takes over, even when I’m texting, I’d guess.
But the hand she uses her phone with doesn’t have to be her dominant hand is what I’m saying. Even with two personalities involved.
Right and I’m left handed but can’t remember ever using my phone with my dominant hand… Besides you usually punch with both hands, you just don’t punch *as hard* with your non-dominant hand (usually and even that is iffy, my right arm is stronger than my left).
There are marks on both sets of knuckles.
Maybe she gave the douche the old one-two!
Double Damn you Willis.
Don’t interrupt! Your fact-based observation is interfering with our speculation. Just because you’re the creator doesn’t mean you’re omniscient.
OK, OK, maybe it does . . .
Judging by how often he can’t remember whether he’s used a comic title before?
“I know something you don’t know…I am not left-handed.”
Neither am I!
Amber may be right-handed, but Justice is Ambidextrous.
despite the scariness of everything going on always the thought of the student body at large still being in awe of amazi-girl gives me life
Well that’s not good. The “not remembering”, I mean.
*plays the theme to While You Were Out on the hacked Muzak*
*followed by Breathless Mahoney’s “Back In Business” from the Dick Tracy soundtrack*
*looks* There’s a Liza Minelli cut of that? Maybe I’ll listen to that later.
Really? “Where is my mind” seems like the obvious pick.
Amazi-girl: You were looking for a way to change your life. You could not do this on your own. All the ways you wish you could be? That’s me. I act like you want to act, I fight like you want to fight. I am smart, capable, but most importantly, I am free in all the ways that you are not.
Amber: No, this is impossible. This is crazy.
Amazi-girl: People do it every day. They talk to themselves, they see themselves as they’d like to be. But they don’t have the courage you have — to just run with it! Naturally, you still wrestle with it, so sometimes you’re still you. Other times, you imagine yourself being me. Little by little, you’re just letting yourself become….Amazi-girl
Amber is not a beautiful and unique snowflake.
No, she is a beautiful and unique human being. With issues.
Like, really serious issues.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCKRI2wEw7I
We’re referring to the movie Fight Club, in which (Spoilers for a famous twist from an 18-year-old movie!), the big reveal is that the protagonist has DID, with the villain literally being the embodiment of his toxic masculinity. Amazi-girl comes from Amber’s rage, but it’s similar enough to warrant the jokes.
Sadly, Fight Club, which is a movie that’s very blatantly about how toxic masculinity and alt-right movements are bad and destructive, has ended up becoming the official movie of bros everywhere.
Ah. Thank you for the clarification.
*Makes mental note to not ever watch that movie*
Yeah, most bros tuned out by the end of it and didn’t actually catch the message what so ever
it is? huh, I didn’t get any of that when I watched it… but I hadn’t heard the phrase “toxic masculinity” until many years after watching it. it really seemed to glorify the fighting, from what little I remember…
I forget who said it, but mostly, anti-war movies are still war movies.
“Toxic Masculinity” as a phrase wasn’t in vogue in the 90s, but it’s very clearly what Tyler represents. Most of the first act of the movie is about how Edward Norton doesn’t feel like a man because he lives in a consumerist society, and he idealizes the “manliness is fighting” idea. And while the movie doesn’t mention race explicity, Tyler does tell an all-white audience that they need to find a cause to fight for because manliness means fighting and they don’t have any real social problems. (Also it stars Edward “American History X” Norton)
I find the movie interesting in that it’s a lot more relevant to 2017 than it was to 1999 in a bunch of ways. It’s practically an allegory for the rise of the internet Trump brigade, with Edward Norton playing Moot, Tyler being Anonymous, pranky counterculture Fight Club being 4chan, and the terrorist Project Mayhem that arises out of the most hardcore Fight Club members being /pol/ or the alt-right. Then the Pixies play as Trump’s elected and Moot decides to try living as a normal, non-terrible person. There’s even a bit about theoretically Fight Club comes from economic anxiety but not really.
I’d recommend giving the movie a watch if it’s on and you have the mental development to understand that the terrorist blowing up buildings is a bad guy no matter how cool his jacket is. Sad that not everyone does
https://imgur.com/gallery/I7SybAN
That gif is amazing
Dissociative Ambernesia… Unfortunately, Amber’s dissociation appears to now be recognizable as DID by the DSM-5.
So yeah. At this point, she really needs to see a therapist about this (whether or not she admits her alter is AmaziGirl).
Amber has needed to see a therapist since she was 13 )= fuck Blaine
Before then, given her behavior in the flashback before the robbery.
very true yeah
I actually thought of that after posting, wish you could edit comments here )=
+1 for “Ambernesia”.
Is that actually amnesia or is that “oh, hey, takes me a bit to remember last night” 5:30 AM brain fartage?
or one of the shades of grey in-between? there are a lot of those, and that’s where my experiences fall. there’s always some breadcrumbs leading to memories I’ve locked up, but sometimes I can forget the breadcrumbs exist until something reminds me, and sometimes following them can be physically painful, or my thoughts slide off and I forget that I was trying to remember something.
I don’t know … I think there is still some … Amberguity.
Come the amazirevolution your jaw will be first against the wall for crimes against the English language. 😉
(Well done)
DID is, as far as I’m aware, impossible to develop by any means other than early childhood trauma. Amber seems to have some kind of dissociative condition, but DID seems unlikely since the Amazi-Girl persona developed in the year prior to college.
That is not true. A lot of people with DID do have childhood trauma, but not everybody.
also her dad’s awful, we don’t know what actually happened in her childhood besides the stabbing incident. … oh hey, that was traumatic too.
Nah, that’s a myth (one that, admittedly, some psychologists perpetrate). DID is way too narrowly defined in the DSM-V.
I’m not going to go into any more detail because it’s not something I feel comfortable talking about in public, but. Yeah. What BBCC said.
This is so unrealistic … everyone knows hashtags can’t include hyphens!
#Amazi
Also those were the rules before Amber hacked Twitter and created an exception.
Don’t be a douche. Don’t steal dogs.
Dogs – They’re Good! ™
On a related note: Hidden Jeph Jacques reference in panel 4.
Heh, nice one.Shelby is a good dog.
Unless that’s pupper shebly, it ain’t shebly. She’s a liiiiittle big to be held like Amber is doing.
She’s not to big. She’s perfect just the way she is.
Puppy Shelby? I’ll buy it.
Isn’t there some long white dog hair in the closet in the AG uniform that wasn’t there a day or two ago? Or is AG also the kind of hero who uses the lint roller without needing to be reminded?
It’s interesting to me, how many folks didn’t realize Amber had DD-NOS or DID, when it’s such an accepted fact in the patreon comments.
well, it’s not exactly a well-understood diagnosis. wikipedia makes it sound fictitious, and hollywood makes it all about an Evil Alter… there’s so much misinformation out there, so much that hasn’t even been researched properly at all…
it wasn’t until Cerberus’ comments that I had any idea what dissociation was *actually* like, or that it was responsible for my mental blocks and stuff…
Honestly, I don’t think Amber’s condition is a particularly realistic depiction of real mental illness either, given that real people with mental illness aren’t *crime-fighting superheroes*.
And I’m a little concerned that this *is* becoming an evil alter-ego of Amber, too, since Amazi-girl has been shown to be significantly more violent than Amber and is now doing things Amber apparently doesn’t want to do.
Given the compressed timescale of the comic, there’s basically no way for this story to end that’s even mildly realistic, either, since it’ll take years of real time to make it to Christmas in-comic, so either this is just the new status quo for Amber for the rest of the comic, or she’s going to make a miraculous unrealistic weekend recovery.
well, we *did* have magical instant-action antidepressant medication, so maybe we’ll have magical instant meditation/therapy session that gets Amber and Amazi-girl talking to each other?
Man, remember when Ruth tried to kill herself a week ago? It sure is plausible that no one cares about that anymore!
No one but Billie, because nobody but Billie actually cared about Ruth because she actively drove everyone else away. Which is totally realistic actually, when it comes to people we don’t like we have that momentary ‘oh no that’s awful’ and then go right back to our lives unless it triggers something personal for us.
Sadly, it kinda is though?
I know two people for whom Wellbutrin had a positive effect within hours. One describes it as “Things became three-dimensional again.” IIUC Wellbutrin affects two neurotransmitters, so maybe other antidepressants are different? Or maybe a few people react faster than most? But it is possible for antidepressants to act quickly.
In fairness, it IS something that Amber did regularly. It’s just that usually she… y’know. Retained memories of doing it.
I mean, it’s the superheroing that’s unrealistic, regardless of whether there’s alters involved, so I don’t think it makes the portrayal of DID unrealistic?… It’s not like the comic implied Amazi-girl has powers or something that AMber doesn’t??? It’s been pretty explicitly shown that Amber has the exact same physical prowess, but different mental prowess, which is the exact point of DID if I understand it correctly?
Amazi-Girl isn’t evil, but she’s also never been good either. She was always just a way for Amber to vent her violent urges. People celebrated her because they projected their own beliefs onto her and because her targets for her violence were socially acceptable.
Also, I haven’t noticed knuckle bruises in the past, which makes me wonder if perhaps this, shall we say, ‘unsupervised’ Amazigirl is a bit less restrained with regards to the amount of force used?
We’ve seen them before. Another case where it looked like Amber was noticing them and wondering where they came from, but that time she shook it off quickly.
I suspect they’re just not normally drawn in, unless they’re being emphasized.
in case you’re wondering what made your link all weird, your url was missing the http:// before the www
Amazi-Girl is the *good* alter.
Amazi-Girl is the golden alter. She’s not actually better, but that’s the role she plays. All the blame goes to Amber, all the credit to Amazi-Girl.
But Amazi-Girl was the one stalking Sal. She tried to attack her in the parking lot.
They’re both basically good people, with a lot of trauma and rage that they repress or channel differently.
this is the best way I’ve seen it put
Not terribly realistic on that front no but HEY it’s a damn sight better than a lot of what’s out there. And by accident no less!
TBH, I tried to research DID for a university project something like 12 years ago, and the most current research I was finding at the time WAS that most cases of it were faked for attention or induced by the psychiatrist. Now, that felt wrong to me (part of the reason I picked DID for the project was that my boyfriend at the time had distinct multiple personalities ) but I was a first year University student, just barely out of high school.
However, I did mention that this was a solid 12 years ago, so I’m sure research is changed now. (I’m also a little horrified now that I’ve put a number to that time period, I swear time is speeding up.)
The research has definitely very much changed, although if you look for it you can still find ppl arguing that all cases are iatrogenic or factitious. Of course u can also find ppl arguing that we’re all possessed by demons so i mean 👉👉
If you’re interested in seeing *how* the Literature has changed i’d rec did-research.org for making psych academia shockingly uh. parsable.
and thanks for reminding me, I *finally* made a patreon account.
now I just have to figure out how to add webcomics… it’s harassing me about social media, which is both unwanted and pointless, I only follow like 3 comic-related twitter accounts and I only log in once every few months.
…well, I had Willis’ patreon page bookmarked, yay 🙂
probably going to be months before I hunt down most of the other comics I read… or would be reading if I rebooted into linux… I still haven’t found an online replacement for Akregator, most feed readers are optimized for text instead of images.
Try RSSOwl. It’s cross-platform, and the interface looks similar to Akregator (both heavily draw from Outlook Express).
“Development status: unmaintained
Initial release date: December 19, 2004
Platform: Eclipse”
yeah no. not a web app, *and* unmaintained, *and* it’s not akregator’s UI layout I care about, it’s the features like “load full page by default”
oh, and OSDD is (more or less) the new term for DDNOS. http://did-research.org/comorbid/dd/osdd_udd/did_osdd.html
now back to bingeing the patreon bonus comics… 🙂
I have OSDD and was afraid I was just projecting. So glad it’s not just me.
it’s a shame Cerberus isn’t around, I wanna hear her thoughts on this… Actually if you thought it was just you, then you must have missed her awesome comments on older strips, maybe go look through the Amber tags for DID discussion 🙂
Awesome! I’ll go look for those, thanks. 😀
Where is she by the way? I’ve been kinda sporadic lately, so I just assumed I was missing her posts or that she was busy with school. I hope everything is alright.
They’ve been under medical care for a while – some kind of very serious stomach complaint, IIRC. They’re probably still feeling a bit ‘bleh’ and I wouldn’t blame her for not wanting to use up what little energy they probably can dredge up right now on non-critical stuff.
and this shortly after dealing with antidepressant withdrawal (at the same time as me!), and potential other illness that I hope turned out to just be the stomach bug… yeah, she deserves lots of rest 🙂
Oh no! And things were going so well. I hope she gets to feeling better soon.
Cerb is ‘she’ not they
yaaaaaaaaay shit
My faith in humanity is strengthened as I see that so many commenters have the same reaction to this revelation as I do.
Tl;dr – uh-oh.
Amazi-Girl is now Venom.
Actually, I think Amber’s now Venom.
Amber, to Dorothy: “Amazi-Girl lost.”
Amazi-Girl: “It ain’t over till it’s over.”
I didn’t see the shot of her hand until the second read-through so I was seriously worried for the wrong reasons at first.
Now I’m seriously worried for the right reasons. Oh, Amber…
Maybe it’s a copycat/impersonator.
Yeah, no.
Notice she looks at her now-bruised knuckles?
It’s not a real dog. It’s just a copycat.
Copydog.
Yeah, I’d’ve gone with Dorothy, Carla, or Rose as the new Amazi_Girl (All for different reasons) except or Amber’s bruised knuckles. Still all in the running, if the knuckles are a coincidence, and dependent on where Amber stashed the costume before (presumably) disemboweling Ryan.
Amber Durden. Noice.
I am Amber’s misplaced sense of justice.
Welp.
GOOD LUCK AMBER.
I’ve been critical of some of the things Amazi-Girl gets violent over.
But dognappers deserve a knuckle sandwich, especially if it rescues the dog. That’s actually legal, dammit.
Is that half cut off Twitter handle @PoopRodeo?
It’s Jeph Jacques. Amazi-girl saved Shelby!
This is what happens when you don’t get treatment for a serious mental illness.
Dognappers get punched? Dogs get rescued?
I’m all for it.
But yeah, Amber seriously needs therapy, but there’s still more drama to be gotten from this first.
Awwww noooo 🙁
… Oh fuck.
Uuuh. She does remember doing that. Right ?
…right ? 🙁
Up in the air but her shocked expression in panel 7 makes me lean towards ‘No, she doesn’t’.
-Wild Guess- Danny is impersonating amazi-girl.
I’m hoping it’s more of a..
“Oh no, that person whose dog I recall having saved last night tweeted that I punched the dognapper in the face.
“Oh no, punching that dognapper in the face bruised my knuckles.
“Oh no, anyone with minimal observational skills may now draw the conclusion that I am Amazi-Girl.”
…And less of a…
“Oh no, my body has been hijacked by my alter-ego while I was sleeping.”
One is cause for concern. The other is cause for SERIOUS F***ING CONCERN.
That’s actually a plausible interpretation.
Cerberus has been talking about how starting to lose time is a serious concern for her and would be a sign her dissociation is getting worse since… forever. So yeah, it’s probably the latter )=
Whaaaat? It’s just a significant period of dime during which your body is engaged in activity without your consent or awareness wherein the entity controlling your body believes you to be an evil monster and thus refuses to discuss this with you. I’m sure it’ll resolve itself peacefully on its own.
Oh no…
wait, she went around at night to punch baddies in the face while she was sleeping?!
No, Amazi-Girl did that. Amber was asleep and so the body was free for Amazi-Girl to use.
bad case of split personality
Oh dear. Now she’s completely dissociating. 🙁
So, it’s finally reached the point where Amber and Amazi-Girl are two totally different women who coincidentally share a body. They don’t even share memories anymore! That’s just about as bad as it can get, I think! 🙁
Well, they’re alive and unhurt (except some bruised knuckes) and last we checked in were on speaking terms (the huge chairs scene), so it could definitely be worse.
Could definitely be worse. She could have more than just one alter (and I’m not talking about 2, I’m talking about upwards of 10) and AG at least seems to recognise her appearance as similar to Amber’s as otherwise mirrors could confuse the hell out of her on a regular basis.
Like, not saying it is not bad, but I am saying there are definitely ways this could theoretically escalate into being more difficult to manage if Willis wished to endlessly torture us for all of time.
^^^
it could always be worse, and Amber’s situation isn’t really up there imho
like, she has friends, hasn’t done anything too badly illegal (not anything she didnt make a full decision to do, as a principle, with both alters’ consent), has a concerned mom and a place to live, hasn’t been involuntarily hospitalized in a shit place (I know some hospitals are cool and involuntary hospitalizations can save lives but there are also some that are bad and make things worse)
Amber is Not Okay mentally, but external situation-wise, she’s still mostly okay, and that means she can climb out of the hole. Hopefully
I’m sure they will never notice. Maybe.
I realize that Amber probably has the Amazi-Girl social media alert on her phone in case her identity gets revealed, but part of me wonders if Amber knew this might happen.
So is this strip meant to be understood as Amber no longer remembers what she did as Amazi-Girl? That’s… not good. :/
probably!
Seems that way to me.
Time for Amazi-Girl to move out and get her own body.
#AmberMallory
Her phone makes me think of my old, blue Windows Phone. It broke after a year.
So before reading the comments, I’m predicting at least one “Amber isn’t DID” thread…
Nope! So glad to be wrong on this one.
There are however many threads going “AAA SPLIT PERSONALITY I DID NOT SEE THIS COMING”
I guess not everyone obsessively reads comments for every strip but just. Wow. Yes. New information that totally wasn’t brought up by Amber every single time she’s mentioned Amazi-girl lately. Totally.
Brought up how? Genuinely curious, I guess I don’t know what to look for.
Like when she flat out told people they weren’t the same. People who actually knew her “secret”.
Like when Amber and Amazi-Girl had a conversation.
All the stuff about Amber being a monster and Amazi-Girl being the good one.
To be fair, it’s been progressing and the disassociation has been getting worse. Originally they were much closer and it was more like a secret identity with different mannerisms. This is the closest we’ve seen to confirmation they’re not sharing memories anymore.
the most blatant (and recent) I can think of
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/03-the-thing-i-was-before/cornered-2/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/03-the-thing-i-was-before/find/
and then more recently, although slightly subtler
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/03-the-thing-i-was-before/unfinished/
the first major freakout signifying that’s what’s been going on
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/02-that-perfect-girl/amber-2/
and soon after that btw
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/03-when-god-closes-the-door/she-2/
“Amber?” “Wrong”
it’s been… progressively less subtle
Oh, ouch. Another step towards full dissociation. 8/
Yea )=
Shakes fist at sky. Damn you Willis! Goes back to read comments.
As a fellow Amber O’Malley, I must register my dissatisfaction with the direction in which Willis is taking my namesake.
I’m… I’m gonna go re-read some Shortpacked for a while.
Amber’s gone full Mr. Robot. She’s even narrating through the fourth wall.
Of course, there’s the simpler explanation: she’s got a fangirl copycat.
And she bruised her knuckles bashing them against the wall during a bad dream.
Uh oh.
Also, who on earth steals DOGS?
Cage animal fighters, dog resellers, PETA.
Okay, three likely possibilities: 1) Fugue state, 2) Stress-induced split personality, 3) Copycat.
Two less-likely possibilities: 1) Evil twin, 2) possession by a member of the Great Race of Yith.
All possibilities: Not Good.
If she’s like me, then she’ll sit up for a second, wipe the sleep from her eyes, and say “Oh YEAH… I remember that now. Crazy night.”
Both 1 and 2 are dissociations I imagine, and that’s NOT BEEN SUBTLE ACTUALLY
Amber has been talking about herself and Amazi-girl as seriously actually different people since she freaked out on Danny kissing her
Thats not Amber . It’s someone masquerading as Amazi-girl
It’s dorothy in the picture. I’m calling it now.
…..Or she’s just dissociating stronger then ever and I suck at reading subtext.
Yeah, the knuckle bruises are the giveaway.
Only 13 likes? Amazi-Girl isn’t as popular as she thought.
Well, it is 5:30 a.m.
No Amber, it’s okay – he means you punched the dognapper, not the dog.
(Wishing that that was what was happening.)
Uh-oh… disassociation isn’t good. This is becoming a Jekyll-and-Hyde thing rather than a Batman-thing… and Amazi-Girl may be having the upper hand.
Amazi-girl needs padded knuckles on her gloves so someone looking for her secret identity can’t find her by looking for signs of punching.
But then how would Amber ever know?
By the scrapes on her gloves.
You’d think that Amber/Amazi-Girl would have knuckle-callouses by now.
Is that a thing? That’s a thing, right?
I don’t know about knuckle callouses but as a sixty-year old man I have knuckle arthritis. One knuckle has been broken three times; I treat doorknobs, phones, tools etc. with a lot of respect.
Well shit.
Can someone please do me a mercy & link to the strip wherein Amber & Amazi-Girl have a conversation? I’m blanking out. Or losing time. Or something.
Or the date of comic would be much appreciated as well.
Do a tag search for ‘amazi-girl+amber’. You will easily find
this.
thank you!
Just wondering how Amazi-Girl knew that there was a dog-napping in progress. While Amber was asleep. Is there an app for that?
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/03-the-thing-i-was-before/cornered-2/
just in case
Oh my god, Amazi-Girl’s costume is an alien symbiote using her as a puppet while she’s asleep!
You know, with almost any other webcomic writer, if dissociative identity disorder came up as a plot point, I’d be cringing hard.
But I trust Willis will handle it well.
Oh.
Oh no.
Oh no no no no no no.
And now I am worried about role playing games like D&D, where you are encouraged to immerse yourself in a totally different personality…
It’s all fun and games… until someone decides that their True Self is Chaotic Evil.
strangely enough, I’ve never been *able* to roleplay. some part of me freaks out about it being “not me”, and if I push too hard I just end up having a meltdown and losing access to words.
I have this too – had never connected it to disassociative tendencies before though.
it might be more of an aspergers thing, I don’t know. I have too many labels these days 😉
am i the only one appreciating that full battery? that is an amazing way to start the day! at least amazi-girl didn’t forget to plug in the charger
I noticed it too. Bet she’s using some kind of inductive charger.
Umm… the first panel clearly shows the phone being connected to a standard charger.
Oh SHIT that girl is disassociating
*Please let this mean there is an imposter, please let this mean there is an imposter, lease let this mean there is…*
“Impostor” doesn’t seem very likely, since said impostor would have to know that Amazi-Girl was out of action. So… Dina, Dorothy, or Danny?
Absent from the circumstantial evidence of Amber’s bruised knuckles, there’d be the possibility that someone (likely Dorothy) is posting “fake news” with photoshopped pics. But there’s those knuckles….
Oh shit, AG is straight up no longer sharing memories. This is getting so bad. *nervous nail biting*
There’s still the possibility it’s Dorothy under the costume; less likely Danny. Amber stashed it somewhere so Becky could move in. As Malaya pointed out, Dorothy, Sierra, Dina, and Amber are basically our roommates with a shared half-bath. Why couldn’t she have stashed it with Dorothy?
Or Danny may have been sleep-heroing in the costume that was left with Ethan. Or, just a “fake news” story. Point being there are other possibilities than the obvious.
Oh jesus we’re actually getting into DPD territory now :S